Samsung S3 (tmo) soft bricked, encrypted, USB debugging off - Upgrading, Modifying and Unlocking

Hi,
Summary: Was running Cyanogenmod 10.2.0 and tried to update to 10.2.1. Phone won't boot. Using CWM recovery 6.0.4.3. Factory Reset reports that it can't mount / clear /data (due to encryption?). Can get phone into CWM recovery and Download mode. Haven't been able to successfully connect to PC (ADB or Odin) even though I have samsung drivers.
I do have an unencrypted SD card in the phone so my normal way of flashing is to connect SD card to PC, download, then in CWM recovery to install ZIP from SD card.
Looking to get into any good state - Cyanogenmod 10.2.1, or 10.2.0, or heck go back to stock.
**** I think the answer might be use ODIN and flash back to stock, I see some guides but haven't been able to get ODIN to "see" my phone *****
Details
I had downloaded Cyanogenmod update to phone using "About this phone" menu and when I tried to "Install it" from that window the machine booted into recovery, immediately failed, and rebooted. The phone is encrypted (work requires this) and I discovered Cyanogenmod saves the download to encrypted phone storage and CWM recovery doesn't support encryption.
Downloaded 10.2.1 to my SD card and flashed it. (no back-up, no wiping of cache). Installed successfully, reboot asked me for my encryption password, Android optimized apps, rebooted, encryption password, then blue spinner spins forever.
From here I started my troubleshooting:
- I flashed back to 10.2.0 then flashed Gapps again, no change.
- Reading about boot.img I installed ADB and SDK Manager and tried connecting and flashing boot.img. ADB devices shows up empty. I have installed Samsung drivers.
- Researching going back to Stock points me to installed Triangle to reset my custom ROM count - but I can't boot.
Thanks in advance.
Matt

[Solved] This is for anyone who happens to read this wondering if their phone is screwed. Relax! If you can get into Download mode and Odin can see your phone, you'll be o.k.
Turns out the machine and cable you use do matter. I tried for days connecting using my MAC running Windows 7 Virtual Machine. Once I switched to my Win7 laptop and used the original Samsung cable things starting working out more smoothly.
Steps:
1) Get Odin (mine was 3.09) and run as admin. If you see an error in Korean it's because you have to unzip the entire Odin folder.
2) Get stock firmware for t-mobile. There's only 1 firmware file, I didn't need a PIT nor a specific recovery step. The t-mobile firmware includes everything I needed. Flashing failed in Odin saying Complete Write failure. This had me stumped for hours and hours. When I switched to stock cable and Win7 laptop it succeeded. I never had to check Nand erase all or repartitian (almost did in desparation though). Flash took about 10 minutes but eventually PASSED.
3) However, when it rebooted it asked for encryption key and my old one didn't work. Turns out their are more steps. This scared me.
4) Reboot into recovery (up, home, power) which gave a bunch of scary error messages. Actually those listed at the bottom in http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1840030.
5) Factory Reset then Wipe Cache
6) Reboot
Now I'm back at stock and breathing a sigh of relief. Unclear if I'll ROM back to Cyanogenmod.
I spent hours and hours reading discussions and going down one dead end after another. I'd say it was like looking for a needle in a haystack but it was the complete opposite. It was like looking for a specific needle in a sea of needles. Every search query yielding tantilizing results and a plethora of step by step guides that ultimately didn't work. A very frustrating experience all around. Good luck to anyone who reads this.

Hi Matt
Similar thing happened to me last night. I am/was using Omni-Nightly build. I plugged it in to the charger before bed, and it rebooted, saying upon reboot - "Encryption Failed" and saying the only way to recover would be to wipe the machine and start again, it then rebooted and all I get is the Samsung boot screen.
Tried rebooting, wiping, everything, Odin, Android Toolkit, nothing works. It shows up on my Linux PCs but not accessible, but not windows at all.

Related

Critical BootLoop (No CWM Access/USB Unrecognized)

My Salutations, I am asking a question in regards to a serious bootloop I have managed to pull myself into.
Most bootloops I usually just enter CWM and flash another rom or restore. This problem however is much more serious.
Every time I attempt to enter CWM it goes directly to download mode. It's as if CWM doesn't exist on my phone anymore or something.
Download mode is the only thing I can access. I have tried multiple attempts to enter any other recovery mode but they all end up getting me to download mode.
This isn't the only problem. I thought this wouldn't be a big deal until I realized my PC can't recognize my phone at all anymore. Even before I got into the bootloop, my phone would only charge but any other recognition from the PC was absent. I have all the correct drivers installed including numerous attempts at re-installing, re-configuring, and restarting my PC.
I think I may have reached an irrecoverable error.
Any ideas would be much appreciated. Thanks.
FYI, The ROM I flashed when my Phone started acting like a bundle of ninnyhammerness was AOKP milestone 6. It's not the ROMs fault of course, seeing as how this ROM is very good. I also had the Darkside kernel. This is when I couldn't manually enter CWM. In stead, I had to let the phone boot up and utilizing the power menu, restart in recovery mode. I thought this was strange at first. I then wiped, and decided to flash the 20th Nightly of AOKP Jellybean just to try it. It booted fine, but then when I had to restart to enter CWM again I chose to flash another Darkside kernel. After this, my phone went into a bootloop. That is where everything else fell apart.
Sounds like either the recovery isn't sitting in the system correctly or its gone. When your phone is in download mode you said that you can't connect to pc. Are you running odin as admin and/or connecting the device to pc previous to putting the battery back?
sent from my T989 full of CM awesomeness and a touch of Venom from the Darkside!!
Yes I did run Odin as an administrator. I also tried connecting the device prior to putting the battery in, and also after.
I had this sort of problem yesterday (I installed a port of CWMR and it had some bugs which lead to it formatting the disk and then freezing and a reboot wouldn't allow me to install a rom...) anyways
1) Go to http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/SGH-T989ZKBTMB? and download the drivers for the phone. This will allow windows to recognize the phone, without the phone having to communicate to the computer.
2) Download Odin v 1.85 (that's what I used anyways)
3) Follow this guide: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1481141 It'll give you a workable CWMR to allow a format and installation of a rom to stop the boot loop
Those three steps should solve the problem, it did for me at least.
Hope that helps!
kmcclry said:
I had this sort of problem yesterday (I installed a port of CWMR and it had some bugs which lead to it formatting the disk and then freezing and a reboot wouldn't allow me to install a rom...) anyways
1) Go to http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/SGH-T989ZKBTMB? and download the drivers for the phone. This will allow windows to recognize the phone, without the phone having to communicate to the computer.
2) Download Odin v 1.85 (that's what I used anyways)
3) Follow this guide: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1481141 It'll give you a workable CWMR to allow a format and installation of a rom to stop the boot loop
Those three steps should solve the problem, it did for me at least.
Hope that helps!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks but, it still hasn't worked. It keep saying "USB device not recognized, Device driver software was not successfully installed."
I was able to fix it. If anyone else encounters this lethal, and pretentious conflict again... I resolved the problem by repeatedly spamming the power button on my computer, unplugging the cable repeatedly and letting my phone sit without the battery inside of it for 24 hours until my PC finally recognized the device.
i3lackDawn said:
I was able to fix it. If anyone else encounters this lethal, and pretentious conflict again... I resolved the problem by repeatedly spamming the power button on my computer, unplugging the cable repeatedly and letting my phone sit without the battery inside of it for 24 hours until my PC finally recognized the device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
also it may be because of a faulty data cable !

[Q] ROM update fail, cannot flash with Odin

Hi,
My brother's SGH-T989D phone (Koodo / Telus) crashed during an android update. Now, the phone boots to a black screen with the taskbar on top. There is no menu screen anymore. No apps at all. Doing a factory reset via the recovery mode does not change anything.
My PC does not detect the phone. Therefore, I am unable to install a new ROM with Odin. Here are all the infos I have :
1. The phone boots, but there is absolutely nothing except the task bar (I can toggle the wifi and bluetooth on and off, thats it...). There phone says preparing SD storage upon booting. There are no SD card and SIM card.
2. The phone is able to go into recovery and download modes.
3. My PC does not detect the phone. I know the Samsung drivers, Odin v3.07 and USB cable are working properly because I am able to connect my own phone which is also a SGH-T989D.
4. In recovery mode, there is a dead android with a red triangle with an "!" in the background.
5. It used to have the stock gingerbread Koodo ROM, and was probably updated over the air to the newest ICS from Koodo.
6. The phone was never rooted or messed with. I don't think it was ever connected to a computer before.
7. It is not under warranty anymore.
I've spent hours trying to get it recognized by the computer. I've tried putting the ROM on the SD card and applying the update via external storage in recovery mode. I get a message about Signature verification failure.
I've tried cleaning the micro-usb slot. Blowing in it resulted in the computer saying "Unknown device malfunctioned" a single time, which leads me to believe it only did that because some saliva created a short somewhere in there. The connections look clean.
I'm about to throw this phone off the building. What is wrong with it?
**EDIT**
Forgot to mention...the phone does charge when connected to the usb cable.
kamikazee1989 said:
Hi,
My brother's SGH-T989D phone (Koodo / Telus) crashed during an android update. Now, the phone boots to a black screen with the taskbar on top. There is no menu screen anymore. No apps at all. Doing a factory reset via the recovery mode does not change anything.
My PC does not detect the phone. Therefore, I am unable to install a new ROM with Odin. Here are all the infos I have :
1. The phone boots, but there is absolutely nothing except the task bar (I can toggle the wifi and bluetooth on and off, thats it...). There phone says preparing SD storage upon booting. There are no SD card and SIM card.
2. The phone is able to go into recovery and download modes.
3. My PC does not detect the phone. I know the Samsung drivers, Odin v3.07 and USB cable are working properly because I am able to connect my own phone which is also a SGH-T989D.
4. In recovery mode, there is a dead android with a red triangle with an "!" in the background.
5. It used to have the stock gingerbread Koodo ROM, and was probably updated over the air to the newest ICS from Koodo.
6. The phone was never rooted or messed with. I don't think it was ever connected to a computer before.
7. It is not under warranty anymore.
I've spent hours trying to get it recognized by the computer. I've tried putting the ROM on the SD card and applying the update via external storage in recovery mode. I get a message about Signature verification failure.
I've tried cleaning the micro-usb slot. Blowing in it resulted in the computer saying "Unknown device malfunctioned" a single time, which leads me to believe it only did that because some saliva created a short somewhere in there. The connections look clean.
I'm about to throw this phone off the building. What is wrong with it?
**EDIT**
Forgot to mention...the phone does charge when connected to the usb cable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
IDK if this will help you. IF the phone isn't rooted or a custom recovery installed I don't believe you can reinstall the ROM. It does say 'signature verification error' so you might be able to turn off MD5 checking before install. It will be in the settings menu if TWRP is used. I don't believe its an option to do if on stock recovery.

[Q] Bricked Galaxy Nexus

So it all started out rather stupidly. I was attempting to flash a new ROM to my phone and I was deleting everything and accidentally deleted the OS by accident (mis-touched in recovery mode). I panicked and I attempted to push a file through adb but it was halting between 4MB - 8MB on a 200MB file. I knew this wasn't right. I ran cmd in administrator mode and tried again and got the same results.
I then moved to ODIN to attempt to flash the ROM. I ran ODIN in administrative mode. Bootloader was unlocked. I attempted to flash the new ROM but it stopped at about 1/8th of the progress (as shown in the download mode). This led to my phone having communication issues with my PC (displayed the phone with a hazard sign on the cord to the PC). I assumed it was bricked after googling around.
I then tried to use OMAPFlash as suggested by other people with the same issue. I did this, followed instructions perfectly, installed certificates. It got to the point where it was attempting to download a file. After 2 hours of waiting, I stopped it stupidly because it was making no progress.
Now my phone is completely black. I have no OS and I am not even sure if I have any files on it. Screen is black, phone not responding to button pushes and it isn't being recognised by my PC. I have tried unplugging it, removing battery and then plugging it in and inserting the battery again and that has failed.
I don't know what else to do. OMAP isn't picking up the phone anymore even though I have followed the instructions perfectly again. The one sign that my phone is still alive is the beeping noise from windows as I insert it meaning something must be happening. This however is soon followed by "Your device is unrecognised".
Can anyone help me on the situation as the phone is in perfect condition (physically) and I can't really afford a new decent phone at the moment.
Here is all the information you may need:
[Before incident]:
ROM: CM11
Rooted: Yes
Bootloader Unlocked: Yes
Ask for anything else.
[Attempted to change to]
ROM: XenonHD
Ask for anything else.
first off, why odin?
its a nexus you can flash back to stock from fastboot. I would suggest you download the factory images for the phone from here:
https://dl.google.com/dl/android/aosp/takju-jwr66y-factory-5104ab1d.tgz
then extract the images into a folder - remove the battery from the phone, put it back in the phone, power up while holding down vol + and vol - to get into fastboot
hopefully you have android sdk installed and fastboot working. use the flash-all script to flash every partition of the phone back to 4.3 stock.
good luck.
Well first thing, did you select the right zip file for your Gnex when flashing XenonHD. Bcz in my case few days ago i stupidly selected the wrong zip file (ROM for Nexus 5) to flash, but luckily i was saved by the CWM via "Status 7 Error".
But your case is more complicated i would suggest you to use Gnex toolkit with Google Factory Images, i hope that it will come for your rescue . Also try this method http://www.androidrootz.com/2012/08/how-to-restore-galaxy-nexus-i9250-to.html maybe it will do some miracle for you. Best of luck.
Progress
So after sleeping on it and spending some time deeply reflecting on the derp that I had made, I successfully managed to use omap to restore my device to the Phone-Exclamation mark sign as posted by another XDA user who ended up sending his phone back. If you search galaxy nexus brick in google images, you will see what I am talking about (can't post image).
I guess the best way to explain it is: [] -- /_\ -- [ ]
Basically it is a phone connected to a yellow exclamation mark sign and then that is connected to a computer.
Is there a way to force my phone into download mode from here. I can't seem to do anything. Some good news is that ODIN is now picking up my device. It is however crashing whenever I attempt to flash the stock ROM (either "odin3 communicator has stopped working" or "odin3 downloader has stopped working").
Any help fixing this?

SM-T210, Tab is halfway bricked

I found, after months of searching, a customized recovery (TWRP 2.8.7.0) for my Tab, and the Android SDK (ADB & Fastboot).
I backupped all of my files and things, and I wiped everything out (accidentally).
Now, my Tab can access Recovery, but when I try to copy a ROM into it's internal storage, after some minutes it exits automatically (I turned the Screen Timeout off), failing the copy operation and not giving any option to restart it at a later time (dumb Windows), and no ROM that I have seen so far is small enough (100-200MB) to copy before the Recovery auto-closes. My USB picks it up (but only for accessing through Windows - Fastboot and ADB don't pick it up).
My Android version is 4.1.2, and I haven't tried many methods apart from Kies (does not detect anytime) and the ones descripted here. The Tab can't charge, and I have 86% battery. I believe that the Samsung firmware is too big for the auto-exit cycle.
However, it can access Download Mode but the USB nor the computer respond, and ADB & Fastboot either.
When I start my Tab up, it gets stuck in the bootloader screen, and Odin (v3.09) shows 1 "Added!!!" message, but I can't do anything with the PC/Tab connection.
So my Tab is stuck until I can find a 100-200MB rom that can be copied without the Recovery shutting down automatically.
Can anyone help me out?
Fixed, installed Odin 3.07 and it somehow made the recovery not close itself, so I flashed RocketTab 3.0!

Stuck on TWRP Recovery mode (LG G3 d855)

So after accidently wiping everything I had on both SD and Internal memory trying to make a custom rom work, I was stuck with a phone that only has TWRP on it, basically. Now after I've been through this guide TO THE LETTER: http://www.droidviews.com/install-stock-android-marshmallow-lg-g3-d855-using-twrp-recovery/ I can see it installed an OS but I cant seem to get my phone to load it! SO then I tried entering recovery mode and getting back to default, it didn't change anything, so I tried installing Zoe rom (https://forum.xda-developers.com/lg-g3/development/zoe-rom-v1-0-mm-6-0-stock-v30a-d855-t3402087) and It STILL ONLY LOADS TWRP even though the installation seemed to be successful!
So what do I need to do? Just flat out delete TWRP? or what? Pleas advise as I'm desperate. If needs be, redirect me to how to just completely reinstall everything from scratch to 6.0 or 7.0 (preferably). I was on 4.x.x for ages and I just wanted to update, instead destroyed my phone. Sigh.
UPDATE: Another thing I've tried is to flash it with KDZ file from the PC. I can see the phone, I can transfer files to it, but windows DOES NOT recognize in the device manage so when I tried to use the flash tool, after clicking "Start" it pops a new window which gets to 60% and then stops saying the phone is not connected to the pc.
Malkishua said:
So after accidently wiping everything I had on both SD and Internal memory trying to make a custom rom work, I was stuck with a phone that only has TWRP on it, basically. Now after I've been through this guide TO THE LETTER: http://www.droidviews.com/install-stock-android-marshmallow-lg-g3-d855-using-twrp-recovery/ I can see it installed an OS but I cant seem to get my phone to load it! SO then I tried entering recovery mode and getting back to default, it didn't change anything, so I tried installing Zoe rom (https://forum.xda-developers.com/lg-g3/development/zoe-rom-v1-0-mm-6-0-stock-v30a-d855-t3402087) and It STILL ONLY LOADS TWRP even though the installation seemed to be successful!
So what do I need to do? Just flat out delete TWRP? or what? Pleas advise as I'm desperate. If needs be, redirect me to how to just completely reinstall everything from scratch to 6.0 or 7.0 (preferably). I was on 4.x.x for ages and I just wanted to update, instead destroyed my phone. Sigh.
UPDATE: Another thing I've tried is to flash it with KDZ file from the PC. I can see the phone, I can transfer files to it, but windows DOES NOT recognize in the device manage so when I tried to use the flash tool, after clicking "Start" it pops a new window which gets to 60% and then stops saying the phone is not connected to the pc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just got over something like this this morning. First, you need to ensure you have the LG Universal drivers installed for your phone. Get them here.
Next, reboot your machine.
After this, I made sure the PC recognized all 3 modes of my phone, TWRP mode (boot to TWRP, connect), Download Mode (boot to download mode with cable) and, at least in my case, the flashing lights mode (shows up as QHUD Bulk or something).
After that, I ran the KDZ restore program successfully.
Good luck and let me know how it goes.

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